Ketamine for Multiple Personality/DID: The Client Experience

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is often misunderstood, stigmatized, or misdiagnosed, especially in high-functioning individuals who mask symptoms through adult-like coping strategies. Many live for decades without a clear diagnosis, struggling silently with memory gaps, emotional volatility, and identity confusion. How can modern therapeutic practices like psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy identify and support people navigating this complex condition?

Today’s guest struggled for years with DID that remained hidden behind a facade of accomplishments until various life stressors made symptoms unavoidable. Through intensive trauma therapy and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, they identified distinct parts within themself, recognized their trauma origins, and began the integration process. The guest emphasizes that psychedelics allow access to vivid trauma memories, the role of the therapist in creating safety and attunement during complex trauma work, and how gaining agency over their identities transformed their condition from a burden into a strength.

Join Dr. Signi Goldman in today’s episode of Living Medicine as she recounts an interview with an anonymous client about resolving DID through psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The guest talks about identifying and healing distinct internal identities, their early experience with DID symptoms, and how somatic touch can facilitate identity reconciliation.

[1.] Explore psychedelic-assisted therapy for complex trauma: This modality offers access to deeply embedded memories and emotions that traditional therapy may miss. It’s especially impactful for individuals with dissociative symptoms who need more vivid and integrative healing experiences.

[2.] Develop a map of internal parts: Identifying and naming distinct emotional states or “parts” can clarify behavioral patterns and triggers. This empowers individuals to respond with intention rather than being overtaken by unconscious reactions.

[3.] Ensure therapists are trained in developmental attunement: Practitioners must skillfully engage with clients at the developmental age of the part being accessed. This creates emotional safety and prevents retraumatization during therapeutic sessions.

[4.] Establish supportive environments before deep therapeutic work: Healing from dissociation requires reliable external support; family, community, and spiritual anchors are essential. A strong foundation increases the success and sustainability of the therapeutic process.

[5.] Encourage integration and agency over dissociated parts: When individuals gain the ability to choose and shift between parts, dissociation becomes a resource rather than a deficit. This shift promotes empowerment, healing, and enhanced performance in daily life.

This episode is brought to you by the Living Medicine Institute.

LMI is a training, resource, and membership program educating providers about the legal and safe use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

To learn more or participate, visit https://livingmedicineinstitute.com.

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the Living Medicine podcast, where we talk about ethical medical use of psychedelic psychotherapy, teaching skills, examining the issues and interviewing interesting people. Now let’s start today’s show. 

Dr. Signi Goldman 0:19

Hello everyone. This is Signi from the Living Medicine Institute’s podcast. Thank you for joining me again. Today we have something unusual and kind of special. It’s the third in a series of interviews with actual clients who have been through ketamine assisted psychotherapy for relatively complex diagnoses. Today, we’re actually going to speak with a client with a diagnosis of DID dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. This is a topic that’s pretty controversial, and probably there’s a lot of people out there with a lot of different views on this, so just know that this interview represents this client’s experience only and in their own words, that being said as a very long time provider of ketamine assisted psychotherapy, myself, I do feel that this client’s experience is representative of others that I have worked with, and therefore I felt justified in getting this message out so that it’s educational for those of you who are curious about this, or maybe running into this kind of work in your own practices, if you haven’t listened to the prior interviews I have done with clients. We had one with a young woman with complex PTSD, and we had another with a client with acute index trauma, both of whom were treated with ketamine assisted psychotherapy and described their experience. Those interviews were really interesting because of subjects like repressed trauma, memories and spontaneous parts work, so I encourage you to check those out. Unlike those prior to however, today’s participant did not elect to have voice or face recorded for this interview, so what you’re going to hear is a recorded audio interview done with the client, with myself reading both parts of the transcript. This is a non edited transcript that actually represents the spontaneous interview that we had yesterday. So as always, deep gratitude for the client for being willing to share their experience. And without further ado, here we go. So this is me as the psychiatrist and one of your cap therapists interviewing you about your experience with ketamine assisted psychotherapy as someone that has a diagnosis of DID known to some of the public, especially in its more pronounced forms, as multiple personality disorder, and we are interested in hearing your story and also your view the lens of how that all played out from your side, right? Because I know my side as the clinician, and I know I’m not the only clinician that you worked with. So why don’t we start by asking you, like, how you carry this diagnosis of the ID, and we can educate people a little bit about what that is at another time. But how long have you known? When did you first realize that you had that or start to suspect that you had those symptoms? Only very recently, even though it has been a lifetime of symptoms, the symptoms are so subtle. And I think this is one of the misconceptions in film and in research, is that this diagnosis is both very exotic and very rare, and I think it’s actually fairly common and very subtle, although it can be at the same time very debilitating, without the person really seizing on the particulars of the problem. What kind of symptoms did you have? Like, if you go back to when you were younger, that you now know were connected to this? When I was super young, I could handle any problem with the, I guess, mind and skill of a much, much, much older child. So I had the ability to dissociate from any kind of pain or emotional content that was happening in the trauma and be very effective, almost like a mini adult. Did you know that about yourself at the time? Or is that something looking back, you realize I didn’t know it at the time? I mean, I was the most responsible of my siblings. I knew I had to be responsible, and then, therefore I was responsible. That’s just the way it was. And when did you first start developing mental health symptoms that you were aware of, which I think was depression, right? Yeah, only in college. Edge, because I was really, really high functioning, and I could mask pretty much everything. If I was in a bad mood, which would actually, in retrospect, be like a huge dissociation. I would just call it a bad mood, withdraw from whatever was happening and come back functional. And often that only took a short amount of time, and you were not aware of having what we would now call parts, though, you did share that the counselor that you saw in college suspected that, yeah, so there must have been signs and symptoms then, then even, yes, yes, I think I was so high functioning, and that diagnosis is so laden with problems, I think it was maybe decided, although not discussed with me, to leave that alone and just call it depression or mood disorder. So in retrospect, you’re aware that you probably showed signs and symptoms of being very dissociative and maybe even having parts. Yes, I definitely had parts at that time, but I just didn’t recognize it like that, and it wasn’t diagnosed like that. And your belief now is that they didn’t want to stigmatize you because you were heading into a high functioning career setting and stuff like that. So you were never told that. And then fast forward up to more recently in life, you’ve been high functioning all the way through in a career and family sense, but tell the story of what happened in the last several years when the diagnosis of DID became more obvious. What was your experience of how that happened? So I would say multiple family stressors, along with the economic environment and career difficulties snowball together to basically put me in a space of not being able to function in my normal, grown up way of thinking. I was on a kind of familiar track to before, because it felt very familiar, but also very foreign to me to be in that kind of head space. And it was noticed by my family and spouse that I was having more difficulty doing what I usually did in my family and career commitments. And so then I began to seek out counseling. How did you appear to those other people, just like you were overwhelmed or you were depressed, I think most people wouldn’t notice it, only people that were very closely working with me or family would notice it. Notice what? Notice that I wasn’t as focused or that I was more emotional, whatever circumstance that happened, my reaction was more emotional than it required. What did you think was going on with you? If you had been asked at the time? I just thought adjustment problems with the family stress and career stress. I didn’t think I felt something was wrong, but I attributed it to just situational like I had done in college. So there’s a known understanding with dissociative identity, dissociative identity disorder, that some people lose time or go into parts and don’t remember. And I think when we’ve talked before, you’re not sure that ever really happened with you. When you were in college, you may have been switching and just not understanding you were switching, but you don’t remember, quote, losing time. I do remember sometimes where I would be in a head space where a lot of time would pass and I didn’t know what I had been doing in that time. And I remember driving on occasion and having to pull over because I had lost where I am or where I’m going. You said lost for a while who you were. Yeah, that happened, actually. That was more recent, but in college, yeah, it was just lost a sense of anything, of what I was doing and needed to pull over and get myself together. And is it the case that you now understand that as you being in a much or that you now understand that as you being in a much, much younger part that was confused? Yes, that’s how I would see it now, but at the time, you didn’t have that language, right? So a lot of this went kind of undercover for a long time because life wasn’t as stressful. And then when life got very stressful, a lot of the stuff that had been there in college re emerged, and you felt you were just stressed out. Other people noticed you were more distractible or emotional. And then what happened?

Then whenever just going to regular therapy wasn’t really meeting the needs, I started more intensive therapy, and that’s when it became obvious that this was something different. And in retrospect, I think in college, I had tried to pull my therapists into. All parts, but they were not, I guess, able to recognize that. By that, do you mean that in retrospect, you would go into younger parts in therapy sessions? Yeah, but it wasn’t like a conscious decision. It was just a falling into it, and then it wasn’t recognized for what it was. It wasn’t recognized for what it was, right? And they didn’t really know what to do with it in retrospect, or they decided not to do anything with it. I don’t know, but it wasn’t I was not communicated with. It was not managed. It was just kind of like brushed aside and Okay, now we’re doing X, Y, Z work stuff or something like that. So going back into more recent years, you went into more intensive therapy, and we know some of that involved ketamine assisted psychotherapy as well as other kinds of work. When did it start to dawn on you? Like, Oh, yeah, this part stuff is back, yeah, that was, gosh, fairly recently, after being in therapy, you know longer, and seeing and looking very intensely at my way of being in different circumstances, and recognizing that, unlike I guess, normal or usual dissociation, where people have A sense of continuity from one state of mind to another that was missing in a lot of my dissociation from one state of mind to another, you would just switch kind of abruptly, yeah, and very situationally like not that I would feel in control of it. So it was often very appropriate and so not necessarily noticed by anyone that I was dealing with, unless it was a close family person or co worker. But I began to notice it myself as a very distinct pattern. When you say appropriate, you mean you would go into a part whose emotional state kind of match the situation anyway, so other people wouldn’t necessarily flag you as having you Right, right, yeah. Or if I felt myself being in an inappropriate space, I would recognize it as such, since we were doing this work and remove myself from the situation. Okay? So you would say I’m in a part that is not appropriate, so I need to get out of here. You could tell that you were in a part, but you couldn’t get out of it, right, right? Yes, because there was an observer part, right? Yeah, it was something being in the mind of a small child and recognizing as a small child that I’m not I don’t need to be here. I need to remove myself. Yeah, so you shared with me that even back when you were, I think, an adolescent or teenager, maybe in college, you had suspected you had multiple parts, because you had drawn out these diagrams of the parts of yourself trying to understand your own self, even though that wasn’t overtly being discussed in therapy. How did you understand that at that time? Was that like an imagination exercise or Well, I think how I first felt that, I think we had taken beginner psychology class or something, and in beginner just psychology class, they’re talking about psych 101, you know, different aspects of personality. And so I kind of extrapolated from that, and I believe that was when people were beginning to discuss ego states, which is normal for everyone. That’s how, whenever I brought it up, that’s how it was explained to me, just as, oh, this is normal ego states. Everybody does that. So you were aware you had these distinct personalities that you had even given names to, but you didn’t necessarily frame that as pathological to use that word, or as like, I’m just getting to know my own sort of ego states, which is on a spectrum of normal, right? And I felt internally, it wasn’t your average bear, but that was not confirmed. And since there’s a lot of work to do in college, I just had to deal with it like that and move on. You know, needed to keep studying and not focus on it. So you just shifted your focus away from that in the period of time between college, when this was suspected, and then more recently in life, when you actually got diagnosed and treated, just for the sake of any audience. It’s not like DID goes away. We could say it was less intense. So in retrospect, were you just living with shifts within your family life or work life that were subtle enough that you masked it? Yes, okay, which I think is a very common thing, which is why I was just highlighting that, because I’ve met other people with DID who are very high functioning, and you’re aware you’re switching, in a felt sense. But people around you don’t necessarily know that that’s what’s going on, right? And you’re covering for it. Is that correct? If I recognize it? Yes, yeah. And you and I have discussed that a lot of professionals are beginning to think that this is more common than was thought, because of the there’s so many traumatized children, and that’s what we suspect it’s originating from, is traumatized children. Okay? And then the more recent work that you’ve done, can you talk a little bit about how you discovered the discrete parts the individual named and identified parts. You don’t have to name them, but how you discovered them, how many they are like, what their developmental ages are. Talk a little bit about just what your discovery process was, getting to know your parts. And then I am interested in finding out a little bit about how psychedelic assisted psychotherapy played a role in that that was different from regular therapy. And what you think is important to know about that, so we can go in that order. Okay? So as far as in college, I think I counted about 22 different aspects of self, and in that way, college counseling was kind of effective, because I finished counseling with much less than that, even though the focus was not to deal with dissociation, and I didn’t really think about it really, but more recently, I identify nine aspects, and these are mostly, I can say, traced back to certain childhood traumas, very specifically, you know, from, you know, like even probably pre toddler age, and maybe two and four and six and 10 and teenage age. And so those would be like the child aspects, but they function often in a very grown up way, especially pre teenage. But they often get over faced in real career, work life. And then there’s, you know, like real grown up parts, which are probably originating from, you know, what do they say? Good objects, good people that were in my life, that I did demonstrate, that did demonstrate really great models of how to, you know, parent and how to be in life. So you’ve got parts of many different ages going from pre verbal child up to adult. And different parts of different ages on that spectrum, I think some are male and some are female. Is that right? Yes, and some are very high functioning in different domains of life. And those are often, I guess, the ones that have gotten you through those are the ones that would help with shifting or masking, as you said, masking, yes, and then some of these younger ones came about or were created to cope with certain trauma. Memory sets, yeah, basically to keep those memories like encapsulated, let’s say encapsulated, so that I can function. So you had different parts that had different parts of your memory that they were holding, and the whole system, or you as a whole, did not have access to these memories, right, which is an aspect of dissociative identity disorder, but that was your experience. And so I know that recently, what happened in therapy, I think, initially completely unexpected to you, but then later with intention, was accessing or dialoguing with some of these parts and also coming into conscious access with the memories that they were holding. Yeah, and then the meaning, because that’s the very important thing that is available with psychedelic psychotherapy or psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, is that the meaning that is coming from a very vague story. When a part is accessed, the emotional meaning provides the solution. If there’s no emotional memory or the memory is chopped, then there’s not a solution, because the picture is incomplete. So what do you mean? Meaning? Do you mean why? Is why this part is doing what it’s doing, like an explanation? Yeah, an explanation for why it’s doing it, and also an explanation for how to help it so that there’s not vice behavior that’s not helpful, right? So some of these parts, and this is pretty typical, have really mall adaptive behaviors that were unhealthy for you, yes, and so are you saying that understanding why and what their needs were helped to take that away in some ways? I mean, I know this is an ongoing process. Yes, it’s an ongoing process, but yes, it removes some of the intensity. Like. If there is an impulse to engage in vice behavior, then being able to tap into where that impulse is coming from, which is often a young part that is over tired or over stressed, or whatever it is, being able to feel into that and then see what it really actually needs, rather than whatever the vice is substituting for helps reduce it interesting. So when you say being able to feel into it or what it needs, this is something that’s new, or that this ability to do that came from recent therapy work, it wasn’t something you used to be able to do, right? Yeah. So there’s this ability now to kind of, when you say, tap into, or feel into, to kind of access these parts more voluntarily, yes, okay, and you have told me that there’s something about psychedelic psychotherapy that worked better than regular therapy for this. Can you explain why that is so? Let’s see three or four things. One is, I guess, any kind of trauma therapy is usually painful, long, difficult and psychedelic psychotherapy makes that process less painful, you can work with something and leave a session and be able to go the next day to your job or go be with your family, versus in regular therapy. Sometimes you need hours or maybe even a day off just to emotionally recover from trauma, from the trauma memory, yeah, because it’s just right there and just raw. And let’s see what I said before, also the realness of the memory, being able to, rather than just with a regular recall, seeing kind of fuzzy images to be with psychedelic psychotherapy, be able to sort of fall into it like you’re falling into a movie set, or like the Christmas story where Scrooge visits his old self. It’s very much like that, where he actually sees like in a movie himself as he was. And in that way, it has a real vitality to it, a felt sense that’s like, Okay, this is real. It almost sounds like you’re saying, and I’m speaking as a provider that in regular trauma therapy, you kind of knew that there was trauma there, but you didn’t fully re experience it or get clarity on what it was. But for some reason on psychedelics, it took you right into it, like into a movie, yeah, yeah, yeah. You almost were fully re experiencing it, but from the lens of, well, my memory is from the lens of that developmental age, yes, yes. So what interests me about this developmental age piece is that these parts exist, and these different parts are different ages. And so if you are merging with a, say, four year old part, the therapist needs to understand that, because the therapist that’s with you needs to talk to the four year old, not just the adult, right? And if they’re talking as an adult, then that can actually be pretty hurtful if they don’t understand that. Well, I’m bringing this up just because it’s something you and I have discussed. Can you explain what the role of the therapist is when you are fully in a younger part that is experiencing trauma? Right? So I think it’s really important for it basically seems like re parenting. So people talk about trauma and re traumatizing, and how not to do that, and what kind of work to do to avoid re traumatizing, and how to repair and not make more rupture. So to get repair, what was missing in most traumas, as I understand it, is someone that could see the situation from the perspective of the child, of the person. And when there isn’t someone, a responsible adult or someone there that can see that, then it just gets encapsulated raw, like a shock memory, like a car accident or something. It’s all raw. And if it with a therapist, gets spoken about from the point of view of the child, then the child as the patient. You feel yourself as a child there, but you also feel the therapist as the responsible grown up, who is there with you, seeing the thing that you see and the horrible thing that you see in the way that you see it, and communicates that in a way, and when they react to it or say something, then it is. It’s almost like time collapses. And that yourself as a little kid feels that as if it had happened back then. And so that is very, very healing, and it’s very effective, because as a patient, you have a feeling that you’re really there versus, you know, in many talk therapies, you maybe don’t have that sense of the vividness of it. It’s basically like the psychedelic whooshes you back into time. Yes, it takes you back to that moment in time in a very vivid felt sense way. Uh huh. It is a trauma memory. So you’re going back to a moment of acute trauma, and you are very young, but the difference is that there’s a kind of safe grown up there with you while it’s happening, and that’s what’s new or different. That’s what’s new, because there wasn’t a safe grown up there before that cared or, you know, witnessed or understood your perspective. And now there is, yeah, and then the last piece that I think we should name, because it’s so interesting to me as a clinician, is there’s the patient, which is you, in this case, in, let’s say, for the sake of argument, a three year old state, for example, describing what you’re experiencing as a three year old. And then there’s the therapist, kind of accompanying you and talking to you, but talking to you as you would talk to a three year old, yes, absolutely, but not as a grown up, but creating safety, uh huh. And then there’s also this third thing in the room, which to me, is really important for providers to understand, which is some aspect of your observer mind is still on board, right? Yeah, because it’s recording this and kind of like replaying over the memory like you would basically, you know, take a tape recording and record over it, and it would be a new recording. Now, instead of you by yourself with the bad thing that happened, it’s you with that grown up there watching the bad thing that happened and getting the support, huh? And so that almost becomes a new memory. Yeah. That’s fascinating. Yeah. And okay. The reason I’m making this distinction is because, for someone listening, here’s what I think is worth emphasizing. If you had been fully dissociated into this, say, three year old part, completely, like completely without awareness of any other parts or your Observer Self on board your adult observer, then there may have been this healing done for this part, but you may not have remembered that right. What was interesting about the psychedelic is that you went fully into the part. You dialogs with the therapist from the part, and also some adult part of you was watching that and had recall of it. And I think that seems to automatically happen on the psychedelic, yeah, I don’t know, it’s pretty fascinating, because you’re just watching your mind do this thing, and it’s just doing it, and it’s recording over, you know, like, bad information with new good information. And your grown up mind is like, Oh, look at that. That’s pretty cool. And then outside of it, it has a different feel to it. When you think back on the bad memory like that, it maybe didn’t exactly, it didn’t happen anymore, like with the bad thing that happened, yes, so the bad thing happened, but it was with the safety here now, right?

And then, what I’ve understood from you is that those parts don’t have as much fear afterwards, and therefore they are less just on a practical level, less symptomatic. Yes, exactly. And there’s more agency to choose in the regular, grown up life, at work or with family, to choose what state of mind that you want to approach something with, rather than just falling into one thing or another without agency, which is, I think one of the points that’s good to point out is that this diagnosis, we may find that it’s actually very useful with psychedelic psychotherapy, in ways that other therapies might not reach it so well, and of course, with the caveat of having enough support and functioning established but but with that so Okay, so given that this is an ongoing journey for you, but yet, we’re doing this interview because you have had some significant shifts and have learned a lot about this. And as a clinician, I’m also interested. So it sounds like some of the key things we’ve learned are that psychedelics can work really well with fully dissociated parts, because they enable the part to be 100% present and having their experience while also having some observer capacity on board that. Is an observer for the whole system, shall we say, which I think is fascinating in and of itself. And another thing we’ve learned is that the role of the therapist there is critical, because the part cannot do the repair without an other, like an I thou dyad. There has to be another, otherwise you’re just re experiencing the trauma. And a third thing we’ve learned is that if the part lays down a new memory of the trauma, meaning I still remember it, but I have a different sense of safety around it, then the patient with the ID, the whole person you is less symptomatic, because the parts are not as easily triggered, right right and reactive, and they’re not reactive, so they’re not just taking over, and they’re not pulling you into vice to meet what we’re assuming are their safety needs or something, because they’re not having the same needs. So what’s fascinating about it is almost the simplicity, in a way, yeah, like that. One by one, we go in, talk to these parts, figure out what their needs, their safety needs are. And then there’s a role of witnessing on the part of the therapist. And then there’s a role of safety for the part at the developmental age that they’re at which is relevant. And then agency for the patient as a grown up. Yeah, can you say more about that just having more flexibility? Because I think the difference between DID and regular everybody who dissociates is choice. And so with DID along the spectrum, there’s more or less choice about switching. And so that is the line, I guess, that gets crossed in the diagnosis part. And so as a person has more and more choice, they may eventually not even meet criteria anymore for DID, because there would be agency so that there wouldn’t be, you know, lost time, etc, right? So agency is like the big thing here, because what someone with the ID does not have is agency Exactly. It just takes them over involuntarily. And if you have agency, then having parts is not really then it’s a superpower. That’s a big deal because you have agency over how those parts are, right? You’ve developed these specific ways of interacting with your environment that can be really, really skillful and focused. And if you have agency to be in one part or another part in a really focused way, then it’s a superpower instead of a deficit. So would you say that the superpower, which is fascinating, because it’s like a step above healing, is it like, I have healed these parts, but these parts are now a resource for me? Yes, yeah, that is so cool. It’s more like, it’s like, more focus than you would normally have, as a person who never had DID, because I think usually you know at least how I understand it. People in regular ego states, they have more flow and maybe less focus. And so with DID, I think you develop this, like, super focus. And so then if you have agency in addition to the super focus, then you can choose, oh, I want to be super focused here. Now I want to, you know, do this in this way. And so, yeah, then you can really, so are you saying that you can pull on the talents or abilities of the different parts at will, yes, which have developed in their own way, very, very specific skills. So that also means you’re saying that these parts are not that separate anymore. In other words, you’re not fully dissociating into them. You’re more as I think healing or needs are met in this way. I think, yes, you become less dissociated. You become more able to stand in between and choose, and then go into it and then choose, oh, this is now what I want to do. So not to get all metaphysical, but who is the one choosing, yeah, the great self of Jung, I guess, yeah, there is some organizing self that is observing this, the observer, yeah, I guess we’ll call it the observer, yeah. We don’t really know it is the one that has a sense of agency that is sort of in relationship with the other parts at this point. And if and at first it doesn’t have agency, it’s just watching, it’s just observing. But then it’s becoming to have agency and choice, I guess. Yeah, yeah, because it’s maybe understanding. The whole system, and instead of then just being along for the ride as a passenger, it actually can understand the whole system and make choice and drive. So one of the reasons you’re an interesting person to talk to, other than the story itself, is that you have worked with psychedelics pretty significantly in your healing journey, and have become really skilled and knowledgeable about psychedelic psychotherapy. You’ve done a lot of study and research. You know a lot about it. And there is an assumption that people who are dissociative should not be using psychedelics, sometimes partly, particularly ketamine, because it is known for being dissociative. And my clinical experience has been that this is not the case. In other words, and I think a lot of the people that I work with would say this, actually, you can use a dissociative or a psychedelic, or a, quote, dissociative psychedelic, to work with dissociation, because the sort of gut response, or maybe like default response, would be, oh, don’t, don’t make someone more dissociative who’s already too dissociative. But what it sounds like happens on the psychedelic is that you can actually get clarity on on your dissociation, and maybe even work with it more constructively, whereas when you’re in ordinary awareness, you don’t have control. Like, there’s no clarity, right? Exactly. It’s just like taking you over, right? Exactly. So it’s an argument for using psychedelics with people who are dissociative, right? To put it simply, right, which basically is what trauma mostly does for people, even in somebody who’s in a car accident or in shock, right? Or even the diagnosis of PTSD, for example, which is so much of the population. So we talked before about a recent session, if you try to do that same kind of let’s call it parts work without the psychedelic on board. What happens to you doing that kind of work, like by myself, with meditation or with a therapist doing that kind of work. So in other words, without a psychedelic and without a therapist, or just without a psychedelic, maybe we could compare all of those things, if you want to. What I’m interested in is what the psychedelic does that you can’t get without it. Ah, yes, okay. So a couple things. So one is the clarity in the different parts, being able to see the different ages. Okay, so now I see this age, now I see that age. Now I see that age. What one can see very well with the medicine is very fuzzy. Without the medicine and alone, it’s also very fuzzy. Okay, so just to pause you, it almost like clarifies the picture, like clearing a glass window, yeah, like somebody that needs glasses and they’re not wearing their glasses. Okay? So before there’s a sense of parts, there’s an awareness that there’s a switching, but it’s confusing or muddy, and then when you get on the psychedelic you all of a sudden see the parts as individuals more distinctly, yes, more distinct, and then also more distinctly their needs and what came about to create that need and that separateness, which is big because you’re not only Meeting them, but you’re also understanding almost their origin story, right? Exactly, yeah, just fascinating.

Okay, so one thing that happens on psychedelics is you can just get more clarity on what your inner map is, yeah, and what needs to happen, okay, and also what needs to happen. So that’s almost a different thing. So you get clarity on this is my map. This is who the parts are, and I see them all more distinctly and as individuals. And then second is, I can also sort of see where they’re wounded and what kind of, let’s call it trauma therapy they might need or something. Yeah, like, what is needed so that they’re not in so much distress, right? And so they don’t just have their vice, whatever their vice is. Like a two year old might suck his thumb, and a grown up who didn’t get to suck their thumb might smoke a cigarettes or whatever, that kind of thing. And so when the two year old is feeling whatever has triggered distress, then instead of reaching for the cigarette, might be able to with the therapy and clarity, all that and all that, be like what the two year old really needs is whatever is coming out of that origin story. Like what they really need maybe was to sit and be with somebody who’s a safe person, which, as a grown up, might be okay. Well, you don’t have the same kind of need for a mom, but maybe you want to go on a walk with a really great friend and just be together in silence, or maybe that answers the need instead of another cigarette. Interesting. So this brings me back to something you said. Earlier, about collapsing time, and we talked about that a little bit. We joked about this word, quote, holographic. But I think what you were just describing was a concept that came up in your work, which was that the parts are real. The parts are part of who you are as your system. That means they exist, not in the past. They exist now, and their needs still need to be met developmentally, according to the trauma at the time it happened, which is in the past, but by doing that, you heal their wounding in the present. It’s kind of crazy to talk about, but on the surface, you’re going back in time and talking to apart from the past, but really you’re just working with the stuff that’s in your nervous system now in the present. Yeah, well, that’s one of the most amazing things in all of this, is seeing, and I think to some extent, everybody has this, to an extent. I mean, there are books and books on the inner child, but when you see that as a real thing, you have the feel of it as a real, a really alive bit of yourself that needs a certain kind of attention that is just as alive and vibrant as it was as a kid. Then there’s more motivation, I guess, to actually take care of it, for example, like the body itself, rather than ignoring its needs and going on and on, doing another four hours of work being like, Okay, this is something that is actually a real part of my mind that is in tact there, and when I respond to it, to its desire to stop and rest or have dinner or whatever, that’s not only meeting the body’s needs now, but it’s meeting the psychic needs as a whole, for self care and self respect and dignity. It kind of reminds me of we’re both aware of the interviews that Dick Schwartz, the creator of internal family systems, has done about working with parts, including what we call DID, which he just sees as an extreme on this spectrum of people having parts where he kind of stumbled on over time, over his career, the fact that really what parts work is, is family therapy, where someone in the system, whoever that Observer Self is, whatever we call it, is sort of taking all the parts and they’re all in one big family and making sure that they are. It’s like family therapy where everybody’s needs are discussed and addressed. Yeah, and the grown ups need to actually feed the kid, you know, rather than, you know, ignore the kid. And then not only is the kid stressed out, but also the grown up is stressed out because the kid is hungry, the body is hungry. And so, yeah, I think that’s like a family, you know, if a patient doesn’t feed their toddler on time, then the toddler is going to pitch a fit in the grocery store. Yeah. So I can imagine, like with family therapy, it would be the same with, say, teenage parts, like a part that’s a teenager, the adult has to talk to the teenager, figure out what the needs are, and so on. So I’m only repeating this because of its sort of elegant simplicity. Yeah, if you’ve parented effectively, then you can probably do this, yeah, which is, you know, again, being a good enough parent is a big deal. But yes, if you can do that, well, you can do this. And considering how incredibly debilitating having DID is to a person’s emotional and mental health, it is inspiring to know that there is a certain elegant simplicity to the solution. And interestingly, for this conversation, especially on psychedelics. Yeah, it’s just like, don’t ignore the needs. Yeah, it’s just like a regular family, don’t ignore the needs. You can’t take care of the needs when the picture is so muddy that you can’t see, you don’t have the full puzzle pieces. The psychedelic basically illuminates. It’s like, I guess, trying to do a puzzle in the dark, and then, you know, the psychedelic turns on the light, and you’re like, Oh, okay. So now look, this square piece goes here. This piece goes here, and you’re like, Oh, it’s a picture of a cat. The cat wants cat food, you know. Or it’s a picture of a dog, maybe the dog needs to go on a walk. So two things that I conclude from this one, psychedelics work really well for DID, which is, I think, not a commonly held belief, but maybe that will change. But two, you can’t do that by yourself. You can’t take a psychedelic at home. It has to be in the context of a therapist that is collaborating actively and playing an active role. I think it’s important to name that part from a safety point of view. Yes. Now, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily easy to find, but we hope that that will also change. So hopefully conversations like these can stimulate those kinds of discussions out there, right? Yeah, and that people have adequate support, you know, because therapists aren’t available. 24/7, so making sure, before you’re going into all this, that you have support from family, support from friends who are knowledgeable enough and caring enough. And, you know, support from your spirituality or whatever, just having all that in place before you’re deep, diving, not just going out and partying and finding some psychedelic to self treat, yes, taking it very seriously as deep and hard therapy. Work less hard on a psychedelic than without it. I think we’ve established, but let’s not minimize that. This is hard. This is, you know, this isn’t a walk in the park. And then have a therapist that knows what to do with working with parts, yeah, and wants to go deep, because just scratching the surface of it doesn’t finish the thing. If the thing doesn’t get finished, if a therapist is too scared to go into the emotion, then it’s not gonna work, because the emotion is still there, unfinished. If the two year old doesn’t, you know, can’t go deep in the emotion, and can only go a little bit because the therapist is scared about that, then the kid experiences still the worst of it on their own, and it doesn’t get finished. The therapist needs to have been well trained enough to be able to feel comfortable going into deep emotion and being able to stay with the patient in that until it’s done. Yeah? As a provider, I think that’s incredibly important. And then they have to have done their own therapy work, because they’re never going to feel comfortable if they’ve not so some of the basic rules for being a psychedelic therapist is do your own work so that your own triggers and things like that don’t get into the dynamic with your patient. Yeah, and have done psychedelic work too to know what your patient is feeling right. Have done some psychedelics? Yes, this is the basics of being trained as a psychedelic therapist, and you’re repeating the importance of that. And then this third one of you know, if you’re uncomfortable with your patient reliving their childhood trauma and you can’t stay with it, then that’s dangerous for the patient. Yeah, then the patient is going to know it, and they’re not going to be able to do it. They’re going to be more dis more dysregulated, instead of less dysregulated. They’re going to leave in a worse spot. So it may even just reinforce the belief that there’s no adult who can handle this safely. Yes, exactly, which I think is really important for people to hear, because I think that happens accidentally a lot with trauma work, where the therapist gets nervous and then tries to just regulate the client, yeah, backpedaling to get out of their distress, their distress, yeah. And I think that runs the danger of reinforcing the message, oh, I’m I am too much. Oh, my trauma is too bad. Nobody can go here with me, right? Yeah. And then they just go deeper into their vice and, you know, say, Forget therapy. Okay, this doesn’t work. It’s important to say this may not even be a conscious thought, right? And it may be these younger parts that are actually receiving this message, right? Oh, this grown up can’t handle this. Yeah, even non verbally. Yes, exactly.

So I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I do want to ask you about the role that somatic work or touch plays at some critical junctures from your perspective as the client, right? So as a patient, of course, everyone wants to be very careful with therapy and touch, and rightly so, but when the patient is sober and has a good working relationship with a therapist, then when they’re agreeing on what’s going to happen when, then that’s the time to practice, you know, do you want a hand on your shoulder, if you’re feeling like, you know, really by yourself, or what kind of things? And then practicing that, and then being able, if the person is in a space where they can’t speak, or they can’t talk or whatever, and they, you know, maybe can only nod, or they’re in a non verbal part, and the therapist can see that, and then you would respond to the person just like you would respond like, if you’re a parent and you saw a two year old crying beside themselves, you wouldn’t just stand there and Be like, okay, honey. You know, you know, take some deep breaths, and now let’s just realize that, you know, it’s not the end of the world. No, you’re not going to do that, because the kids just gonna, like, redouble, you know, like feeling awful. So, you know, with a two year old, you would maybe pat him on the back, or pat him on the shoulder in a rhythmic way until they’re like, Hey, okay, it’s all right, it’s all right. And with your voice and your breath, just re establishing that parasympathetic, like, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. So soothing, soothing, exactly, and we all know that soothing, especially with young children, is very much about touch and comfort through touch. And yes, we all also understand how nuanced the use of touch is, especially in psychedelic therapy, and how it can be done traumatically. And so this is by no means suggesting that touch should not be used with care and discernment and training, lots of training, and also. So certain types of repair, especially with young parts, as you just named, doesn’t really work without some sort of physical contact, right? Because they’re just abandoned. They’re like, okay, by yourself crying on the floor, great, you know, pat yourself on the back. You can’t verbally soothe someone who’s pre verbal and doesn’t understand what’s happening, but you can do that with contact. Yeah, okay. Well, is there anything else that you feel like it’s important or want to say that I didn’t think to ask? Gosh, I think we covered the basics. It’s the basics of going through DID treatment. No big deal. Yeah, I think the most important thing to realize for anyone who is listening is that it can be subtle, and it’s much more prevalent than what we think it is. And there are probably a lot of professionals, maybe even somebody you know who are either diagnosed or have all the symptoms of this, who are, you know, seemingly doing just fine, yeah, or maybe believe that their diagnosis is PTSD or something exactly when it is more in line with DID, and They don’t have a language for that. And I guess it’s worth naming that you are a highly educated white collar professional, so it’s very possible to function at a very high level in society with masked DID. And that’s another stereotype that it would be good to debunk, right? Yes, not everyone is Eve, you know, in the film or symbol, not by a long shot, yeah, okay. Well, thank you very much for doing this. You’re welcome. 

Outro 51:58

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